Vizio enjoys a Black Friday bump in sales

Vizio's move to cut prices on select HDTV models in advance of Black Friday looks like it was a pretty shrewd maneuver, with the company showing 162,000 units sold in North America over last weekend. To put that in perspective, that's a sale almost every 1.5 seconds, 24-hours a day, from Friday to Sunday. The lion's share of those register checkouts were for 32-inch displays, and adding in 32 37-inch and 42-inch offerings accounts for almost all of the units; so this isn't a flood of 19-inch TVs that are finding their way into guest rooms and kitchens. Who knows if it's the new high-quality marketing message or the value-brand perception, but Vizio seems to be doing pretty well for itself, indeed.

UPDATE: Wouldn't you know it, Vizio's Black Friday sales figures were actually even higher than those reported above. The 162,000 units moved were from Amtran, only one of Vizio's suppliers, and Amtran does not even provide 19, 22 or 26-inch TVs that were sold.